CHUGUIV, Ukraine (AFP) – At least 22 people including military cadets were killed and two others were seriously injured on Friday when a Ukrainian air force plane crashed near Kharkiv in the east of the country, the interior ministry said.
Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko confirmed the death toll to AFP, describing the incident as a “shock”, and saying that the cause of the crash was being investigated.
Footage of the crash released by officials on social media showed the smoldering remains of the Antonov-26 transport plane.
“Most of [the dead] were students” of the Kharkiv National Air Force University, the air force said in a statement.
There were 27 people on board, 20 cadets and seven crew, it added.
Twenty-two have been confirmed dead, two are injured and “the search for three more people continues”, the emergency services said.
The injured are in a “critical” condition, regional governor Oleksiy Kucher said on Facebook.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the crash as a “terrible tragedy” and said he would travel to the Kharkiv region on Saturday.
“We are urgently creating a commission to investigate all the circumstances and causes of the tragedy,” he wrote on Facebook.
The plane crashed at around 8:50 pm local time (17:50 GMT), two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Chuhuiv military air base, the emergency services said.
In photos released by the emergency services, firefighters in helmets and reflective clothing sprayed aircraft debris with jets of water.
